La grammaticalisation du présomptif en roumain

In the written texts dating from the 16 th–18 th centuries, most of the modal forms seem to be underdeveloped. Our attention is also drawn by the large number and the various means of expressing [+ fulfilled] action or [+ anteriority]. More often than not, all the periphrases combine with the Past Participle and the Present Participle, giving rise to an intermediary form known in Romanian as “prezumtiv”, which does not have a clearly defined status: “tense”, “conjugation form”, “epistemic or potential variant” (Iliescu 1999 : 108), but which, under no circumstances, should be considered as a mood in its own right since it borrows forms from some other moods and since, semantically, it is not the only one to express epistemic values. When it was first recorded, the periphrase had no modal value but rather aspectual − temporal ones, being marked [+ duration] and having present, future or past time reference. It explains why the form ară fi aflând is the synonym of the conditional form aş(i), ai, ară + fi + the participle of the lexical verb, not to mention that at the time the two forms of the participle were confused.

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